God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

Yes, i believe God created everything, the whole, amazingly finely tuned universe, and life. He created the cell, all animals, all plants, everything.

You're telling us the watch you've seen on a beach and cries out design, only the beach is made of watches, and the sea is made of watches, and the air is made of watches, and we are made of watches. Please, keep up the pretence that you don't recognise your case of special pleading. If you don't like being labelled dishonest, perhaps you should stop with the dishonest arguments....

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Christian: "My faith grows every day."Atheist: "So does rhubarb, and for the same reason."

In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

An omniscient deity has a mind that contains what is essentially a replica of all the information in the universe. That is nigh-unimaginably complex. Even if the mind of the god only has a constantly-updated map to the state of the universe, such that the knowledge isn't contained within its mind, the mapping mechanism is then just as complex, so the problem doesn't go away.

Only a deity with no details, no knowledge, no attitude...basically a "nothing" god, can be accurately described as "simple".

This is completely fair. Godexists, please accept my apology for having called you a liar. I will amend the claim to "I believe that the folks you got your information from are dishonest and/or intellectually lazy" and that you are sincere in your beliefs and motives.

that being said, I hope I can engage you again. If so...

You said this:"1) The more complex something is,the more likely it is a product of design."

this is what you're trying to prove. Having it as a premise is not legitimate.

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...religion is simply tribalism with a side order of philosophical wankery, and occasionally a baseball bat to smash...anyone who doesn't show...deference to the tribe's chosen totem.

~Astreja

To not believe in god is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place.

God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

These inexplicable constants and quantities, they were rules god made, right, or they were rules he had to follow?

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Christian: "My faith grows every day."Atheist: "So does rhubarb, and for the same reason."

Maybe this discussion needs some help from one of the inventors of this 'science'. Enter William Dembski. In the July/August, 1999, issue of Touchstone Magazine, he said

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... intelligent design should be understood as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in Scripture. ... To be sure, creationists who support intelligent design think it does not go far enough in elucidating the Christian understanding of creation. And they are right! ... Even so, there is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This gives intelligent design incredible traction as a tool for apologetics, opening up the God-question to individuals who think that science has buried God[1].

God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

Not even your own answer, but something you cited from someone else. Not only that, but pure sophistry to boot.

A solid state drive is a surprisingly simple piece of computer hardware. It has no moving parts, no motors, just the controller and the memory. It is also completely useless until you add a lot of complexity to it by installing software on it. More to the point, the amount of entropy created by breaking a solid state drive that has data encoded on it is far higher than the amount of entropy created by breaking a blank solid state drive - meaning that the complexity of the former drive is necessarily much higher than that of the latter.

In short, trying to argue that an immaterial mind has no complexity is disingenuous and untrue. For that mind to be able to do anything, it must contain data, and the more data, the more complex it ends up being. A mind that contained all information in the universe would be immensely complex; indeed, it would be more complex than the entire universe, because it would have to have a way to retrieve a specific piece of information and not some other piece of information instead.

In short, if a mind contains information, its complexity necessarily increases based on the information thus contained, on top of having to have the additional complexity of the storage system which contains that information and the data retrieval system that allows the information to be accessed at need.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

Well, well, someone know what god is like! I imagine that the writer here hasn't actually seen god or had a cosy chat so I imagine this is just a few handy thought up words to make things look good. We have no idea what god is like in the physical / non-physical sense. However, we can made some tries at working it out.

1. the only designers we know are material beings2. God is said to be a designer2. He must be a material being.

Then there's the simple bit.

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William Dembski: Law of Conservation of InformationThe Law of Conservation of Information was created by William Dembski and involves some very detailed and complex mathematical equations. At its most basic, Dembski's law states that nature cannot create new information (as in information contained in DNA); it can only work with the information it already has. Therefore, a more complex species -- one that contains more information -- could not have evolved from a less complex species[1]

Now it would be easy to think of away out but, if Demski is right, then a god must be more complex than the things he designs. Yes, we know he is material so this applies though it may well apply in some spirit world if there is one. The only problem then is, of course, because you have been waiting for it, god cannot have come together by chance, by any laws we know of so he must have been designed. So, really we are looking for the designer's designer only its a slippery slope. There will have to be more and more designers going back and back and back.the only way to break the chain is to break Demski's rules and if that can be done for a god it will surely work for nature too.

If GE doesn't even understand why circular reasoning is a problem for an argument, then he and everyone else needs to take a few steps backward and talk about how arguments work in general, rather than on this topic. He needs some basical educational groundwork still.

Begging the question (petitio principii) – providing what is essentially the conclusion of the argument as a premise

nope. what you need to do in order to disprove the premise, is just to explain why you think its not true. the argument flows from the premise, observation, and conclusion, logically.

1) The more complex something is,the more likely it is a product of design.2) Biological complexity is more complex than all man-made design.Therefore,biological complexity is a product of design.

Where is the cut off point? I mean, how complex does something have to be before the likelihood of it being designed reaches over 50%? Do you have an example of something that is complex but not complex enough to imply a designer?

Wait, how silly of me. No, of course you don't, because you already believe everything was designed.

« Last Edit: January 23, 2014, 04:07:49 PM by Ataraxia »

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Christian: "My faith grows every day."Atheist: "So does rhubarb, and for the same reason."

You said this:"1) The more complex something is,the more likely it is a product of design."

this is what you're trying to prove. Having it as a premise is not legitimate.

Is a single iron bar much simplier than a pile of rubble from the World trade center?

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

nope. what you need to do in order to disprove the premise, is just to explain why you think its not true. the argument flows from the premise, observation, and conclusion, logically.

If you are assuming as your premise the conclusion you are trying to prove, then your premise has no basis in fact. If your premise has no basis in fact, then you have nothing to support it. If you have nothing to support your premise, then it cannot stand up to even the slightest rebuttal. That is why using circular logic is so detrimental to your argument. It only seems solid to you because you assume it to be true without testing it, but it will not hold up under the weight of your own arguments, let alone any rebuttals pitted against it.

Imagine if someone built a house without a foundation and told you repeatedly that his house would remain stable and was safe to live in. Would you move in with your family and all your possessions because he had told you that it was safe?

Quote from: Godexists

1) The more complex something is,the more likely it is a product of design.2) Biological complexity is more complex than all man-made design.Therefore,biological complexity is a product of design.

Why is a more complex something more likely to be a product of design than a less complex something?

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

So much of it all, everything really, is based on simple positive and negative charges and the amounts of elements available - and time. It all happened on it's own, step by step. (Each step 1 million years)

- notice how ATP is only oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, nitrogen ( the little NH2 - 1 less H than ammonia - sorry, I originally typed alcohol ). The bends in the chain are always carbon, sort of like glue.

Energy in the form of ATP is a requirement for all cellular activities. ATP is produced in the light reactions of photosynthesis.

This shows why plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, also using water and giving off sugars. The little engine of life.

I liked this summary of possible early evolving photosthesis:

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The Theme of Evolution in PhotosynthesisMany believe that, early in the Earth's history, microorganisms consumed organic molecules in much the same way that most animals and microorganisms do today. As you might imagine, these ancient organisms ran into a little problem: they were eating away all of the available food but not producing any of their own. (Sounds a little bit familiar, doesn't it? Looks like humans still have a lot in common with microorganisms.) Even though ancient organisms hadn’t even seen a cake yet, they were still trying to have it and eat it, too. Estimates suggest that photosynthetic organisms appeared on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago.4 The original photosynthetic organisms may have actually used hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as their electron source. Scientists then speculated that cyanobacteria (named for their color) evolved the ability to split a water molecule (H2O), which made the super-strong reducing agents needed for fixing carbon dioxide (CO2) and producing the carbohydrates required for life as we know it. The evolution to water-driven photosynthesis must have required a lot of changes in how organisms at the time conducted photosynthesis. The main reason for the needed changes is that H2O holds onto its electrons a lot better than H2S does. Once organisms figured out how to pull H2O into the reaction, a lot of oxygen (O2) was pumped into the atmosphere, and organic materials began to accumulate on the young Earth.

It's important to point out what is always referred to here - we and everything else are the way we are because these primitive chemical reactions led to this type of reality. We (humans) were not set up, and then these chemical reactions put together by a creator for us. If it happened differently, life would be different. It's interesting how silicone is higher on the amount list from star stuff, and one would predict more silicone involvement in other existences. If you stop and think about stars, sunlight, and the energy systems stars drive and stars use, along with the elements that make up the universe, it is easily possible that the universe is teeming with life. Not humans, but probably mostly amoebas, protozoa, algae type stuff, types of plants, etc. Of course teeming means , I don't know, one planet at the right place every 100 solar systems. Plus, the timing has to be right on the evolutionary path. If you follow space news the amount of known goldilocks zones is increasing quickly.

So how could a non-physical entity, not composed of parts, create matter? Where did the matter come from?

I don't know how. I don't have answers to all questions. How do you think matter arose at the big bang ? what caused matter into existence ?

Why do you continue to appeal to ignorance?

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

^^Indeed. If you don't know, Godexists, then how can you say it was done at all? And don't just tell us that you believe your god did it somehow. Belief is useless in science. Scientists don't do experiments by praying for a god to make what they want happen; they do the experiments themselves in order to see what actually does happen. If they don't know how to do the experiments, then they don't make positive claims based on the experiments they didn't do.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.